This kit was a long awaited kit by most
airline model enthusiasts. The only other kits of this aircraft were by Masterkit
which was a little rough for an injection kit. Welsh models of the UK did a
vacuform / Resin kit of the 757 as well. So we weren?t really served with a
really good injection molded model of the 757. Now this Airliner is my favorite
and I was very much anticipating the release of this kit my Minicraft.

Being a very popular North American twin
engine Narrow body Aircraft. It is flown today in the Americas by United, Delta,
Continental, American, UPS, and Northwest Airlines. It has also made it?s mark
with European carriers such as the German Condor airlines, Air 2000, DHL, and
LTU to name a few. This aircraft was so successful Boeing recently started delivering
a 300 series 757 which is much longer than the 200. A very pretty aircraft.

With today?s technology quite a few of
us airline modelers assumed the Mincraft 757 would be of the same quality of
their fantastic kit of the Boeing 737. The 737 was accurate, simple, finely
scribed, reasonably priced and lots of fun to build. The 757 kit was disappointing.
As modelers we usually can use experience, new techniques, trial and error in
building a model we so desire. I think my skills were pushed to the limit with
this kit. Most of the parts were a very poor fit. The worst fit being the joint
between the wings and fuselage. The engine pylons were angle up and needed to
be fixed. I rebuilt the engine pylons using sheet card. On the engines I used
brass tubing to create a seamless intake. The fin was corrected by adding some
sheet plastic to the top and reshaping. The Aerials were all fabricated from
sheet plastic. I used superglue (cyano) and Testors liquid cement for all of
the construction except the landing gear which was attached with 5 minute epoxy.

Now for the painting process. I had decided to do the
Royal Airlines scheme as I had a friend who was flying this machine. So AHS
( Airline hobby supply) came to the rescue with decals. The fuselage and engines
were painted with Tamiya Pure white out of a spray can. It?s a Lacquer paint
which is very white and gives a tough gloss finish. The purplish/blue tail was
mixed from Mr. Color (Gunze) lacquers.

The wings were painted using Xtracolour Boeing Grey.
The gold stripe was painted with Mr. Color. All leading edges were airbrushed
with Alclad polished aluminum. Detail decals such as the coroguard (Grey panels
on wings giving anti corrosion) came from a great sheet for the 757 done by
Flying colors in the US. I added black ice inspection panels from decal painted
black. All decals were applied using Solvaset. I use it on everything as I like
the decals to look like they were painted on.

For a final finish I brushed on two coats Future acrylic
floor polish on the fuselage and Horizontal stabs. The wings and engines were
clear coated with mixture of flat lacquer and gloss to give a dull shine. I
then proceeded to attach the wings and Horizontal stabs, lining them up with
the fin. The gear was attached and the aircraft sat upright on its gear so I
could get the aircraft sitting just right. This is where it got nasty.By using
a ruler in this process to measure the wing tip to ground distance I could not
get the 757 to sit right with out the tail fin being less than 90 degrees.

It took me a while to figure it out. I looked at all
of my construction and had fellow modelers look at it as well. The surprise
was that the whole fairing for the wings that sits on the fuselage was tooled
in the molds sitting higher on one side causing one wing to be higher than the
other. What a mess.

The only way to correct this in the future is to cut
the tail off and the nose off and glue them on straight. I finished the kit
up by adding rotating beacons and nav lights colored with Tamiya clear. So overall
my favorite airplane has not been done justice by this kit. Maybe take another
look at the Welsh 757.

by Andrew Forster

Member Comments :

Man, I thought it was just me that couldn't get the wings right. I even built a jig to glue it all up evenly, but that didn't work either (it did on all the 737s, though). I guess I'm not so crazy after all.

After gluing the fuselage together, I drilled holes 1/16" diameter in the front of the stab mounting slots, just drilling through the thin web of plastic on the inside of the fuselage. Using a 1/16" diameter hard brass rod, I checked that the vertical fin was perpendicular to the stab locating slots - it wasn't! One more problem! I applied a lot of pressure while the glue was still wet until it was aligned OK. I then inserted a second brass rod into the front of the forward wing attachment slots and held it in place with tape. As expected, the two rods (and thus the stab and wing slots) were way out of alignment.

I cut the fuselage in half with my CMK razor saw just aft of the wing fairing, about at the center of the aft under-floor luggage compartment door. I glued a .015" by .250" styrene strip reinforcement inside the severed forward fuselage section, and when the glue was dry, dry-fitted the aft fuselage back in place. By twisting it about .050" to the starboard, I was able to get perfect alignment between wing slots, stab slots and vertical fin.

I proceeded to check the alignment between the aft lower part of the cockpit clear section and the wing/stab slots, and to my surprise it was also perfect. No need to correct the forward fuselage as Andrew and I had anticipated.

It's not a perfect fix, as the fuselage section aft of the wing isn't really round but sort of oval. I'll have to sand the joint a bit and use some filler. Needless to say, the panel lines running the length of the fuselage no longer line up. Overall, however, I think it's a pretty cool fix to the kit fuselage. Andrew, hope you approve.